Gotta love Berg. He fully embraced the 12 system without letting it make his music devoid of musical creativity. While i understand what Schoenberg and other die hard serialists were going for, Berg is one of the few whose music i actually listen to on a frequent basis. So good.
Definitely the most tolerable music using the 12 tone system; it’s all just a little trite to me. But I mean how much more unpredictable can you get? There’s no denying this piece catchy in its oblique melodies and motifs
Schoenberg was never a "die hard" serialist-He was fully aware of the limits of the system he invented, and that's why his 12 tones compositions are all short-Some of his pupils did become overzealous-And don't forget the dispute with Mann, when both of them were refugees in California-However, I find Berg's Lulu rocks!!!!
I’ve always felt that Schoenberg in his dodecaphonic period worked best when setting his music to a narrative drama, like in the Ode to Napoleon or A Survivor from Warsaw
"The concerto is in two sections, with two movements in each part. The first section portrays Manon Gropius alive; the second, her illness, death, and the passage of her soul. (Manon died of polio at age eighteen. She was the daughter of Alma Mahler Gropius. The family was close to Berg and his wife.) Berg has indicated by means of his expression markings in the score the qualities of character he wishes to depict. The First Movement begins with an introduction of gentle arpeggios answering back and forth between harp and solo violin, which critic Joseph Magil has linked to the girl's breathing: inhalation, exhalation. The movement proper starts with a solo double bass (measure 11), quietly accompanied in G minor; the violinist's answering rising arpeggio is an exact statement of Berg's basic twelve-tone row (G-Bflat-D-Fsharp-A-C-E-Gsharp-B-Csharp-Eflat-F) starting m.15 (rising from low G to high F) which at m. 24 is heard again, starting hight G, but now descending and inverted, after the cellos have repeated the double bass theme (starting m. 21). Such symmetrical statements and answers are typical of the concerto as a whole. After a 'delicate' flute figure at m. 28 (delicato), the soloist introduces a second theme, in triplets, marked un poco grazioso (m. 38). Increasingly lively figuration leads to a restatement of the 'double bass theme' of m. 11 by the solo violin at m. 84. The return of Manon's arpeggio figure (starting m. 94) in woodwinds and harp signals the transition to the Second Movement (beginning m. 104), a scherzo with two trios. A waltz-like theme is given by two clarinets (m. 104), and taken up by the violin in double-stops. Viennese high spirits, even sauciness, are recalled, alternating capriciously with more reflective moods; the two trio sections are each introduced by the orchestra without the soloist, the first Trio (m. 137, Subito un poco energico), the second Trio (m. 155, Meno mosso). Then the first Trio is repeated (m. 167, poco energico, tuba solo) before the reprise of the scherzo (m. 173 clarinets again, but now with a counter melody in the violin). The tempo winds down before the appearance in the horn of the folksong in G flat major (m. 214), a nostalgic country dance called a Landler. The waltz tempo returns and the movement ends somewhat pensively in G minor (with F sharp as major 7th); thus, G-Bflat-D-Fsharp, the first four notes of the tone-row. The Third Movement is a violin cadenza accompanied by the orchestra; the mood is anguished, as befits its subject, which is the onset and progress of the disease and the girl's ultimately unsuccessful struggle against it. A staggering rhythm first appearing in the horns (m. 23), then in chords in the solo violin (m. 35), symbolizes the illness; Manon's resistance is seen in references to the waltz theme and arpeggio motive (mm. 60-80). A more tranquil middle section (beginning m. 78) may represent a stabilization that occurred prior to the final stage. After a shattering climax (m. 125, molto pesante), based on the rhythmic motive of m. 23, the music calms down again towards the Fourth Movement (beginning m. 136 ) the solo violin' builds the chorale's opening, note by note, on its lower strings, at last giving it completely. The woodwinds then restate it in Bach's harmonization. The words are printed in the score over the melody: 'It is enough! Lord, when it pleases Thee, Release me! My Jesus is coming: New good-night, O world, I am going to the Heavenly house. I will travel safely in peace, My misery left here below.' The chorale subsides, and the arpeggio figure, 'exhalation' only, is heard quietly in the second violins and cellos (mm. 158-165). At this point, the solo violin begins a slow steady ascent which is gradually lost in the mass of the orchestra as instruments are added; another climax is reached and gradually calms. The landler, now marked to be played 'from afar,' emerges in the clarinet and horn (mm. 204-207); a coda founded on the chorale concludes (m. 214), with the arpeggio motive breathing again 'from afar' in the last two bars. Manon has traveled safely in peace; the girl has become the 'angel'. This is the primary programme of the concerto; however, research has revealed that incredibly there is another 'secret' programme at work. Berg's marriage was outwardly exemplary, but in fact he loved another woman, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. In addition to devising motives from the initials of their names and using them in the concerto, he has constructed the work around numbers that were numerologically significant to him. The number 10 he associated with Hanna; the number 23 had special meaning for him (he believed it was his 'fate' number. He expected to die on December 23, 1935, his last full day; he passed away just after midnight on the 24th.) Also, he had founded, with Willi Reich, a music magazine called 23. The title was a joking reference to the clause in the Austrian legal code which allowed for the public correction of false statements and presumably in this case by music critics. In the concerto, these numbers are reflected in such inaudible structural details as the length of the introduction, 10 bars, and the last section (230 bars, or 10 x 23). Berg may have been saying farewell not only to Manon but to Hanna as well. It has often been suggested that Berg wrote in the violin concerto not only a requiem for Manon but also for himself. This is true, but in fact he wrote more because the programmes though specific to personal circumstances are symbolically universal: Manon is any loved one, Berg is any one of us. The Berg concerto is not casual listening, either in language or emotion, which may work against its widespread popularity, but its significance as a work of art and as a moving human document is indisputable." Jeffrey Wall, Orchestra London, Ontario, Canada, 1997, (with minor additions by Mehdi Javanfar.) Finally, a couple of other RU-vid sources for further Berg studies: Alban Berg Documentary: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oCHEwV0BnJM.html AND Great Composers, Alban Berg: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Dv7TfD9L6i8.html
TLDR. I tend to ignore program notes and instead focus on the score itself, not analyzing it bar by bar. I'm actually learning the Berg Violin Concerto right now. I remember one time I read an analysis of the Sibelius Concerto and I just wanted to rip it up after reading it. It was full of assumptions and strange ideas that otherwise would've ruined my own personal meaning of this piece. CD liner notes are often full of crap too. It's like "were you there with them when they wrote it? How do YOU know what it means? Were you inside their brain when they chose the notes and rhythms?" Give me the basic story, which i already know anyway, "He wrote it to the memory of an angel and her name was Manon Gropius, daughter of Mahler's widow Alma who had since remarried. Manon was 18 or 20 when she died. And then Berg died only a short time after it was finished, it was his last work." That's it! No comments about "the horn solo in Bar 205 means that he was full of crying and anguish". Ok, maybe mention the Bach Mass quote in the second half.
@@BenjiOrthopedic Dude, wtf is your problem? You just have a knee-jerk hatred of analysis?? What, did the OP need to begin each and every sentence with "in my opinion" and "from my point of view"? The author is dead and as soon as someone else experiences your art it ceases to be yours. OF COURSE ITS FULL OF ASSUMPTIONS THAT IS THE ENTIRETY OF MEDIA ANALYSIS There is no singular truth, and unless an analyzer explicitly says "This is the only interpretation", then, you know, they aren't saying that. You don't have to get offended that their analysis is more detailed and different than yours. To the person who brought this quote, thank you! It was a real trip to read along and listen while battling Covid. Polio, man. Thank God for vaccines
@@pantslesswrock WTF is YOUR problem? Oh yeah, you have no life so you troll on RU-vid as a keyboard warrior, going to battle for people you don't even know? If you don't like someone's FREE SPEECH, then move on and don't comment! Ok, enough of this testosterone-infused volleyball game. Obviously we have markedly different viewpoints here. I guess you got your daily dose of "putting someone back in their place" for today. Slow clap. CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.
@@musik350 the way I was taught to analyze it was G minor major 7, A minor major 7, and then the the notes of the whole tone scale that lead up to G and A
One of the best pieces for Violin ever written. Surprisingly tonal and atonal simultaenously, perhaps it's because of Berg's almost harmonic 12 Tone System
This isn't really a dodecaphonic work. It's very dissonant and leaves these dissonant harmonies unresolved, but still uses conventional scales, chords, and chromaticism, and there's tons of sequences in it in which harmonic intervals follow one another, e.g. the 12 notes aren't equal. This is also why it's still very listenable.
I've listened i don't know how many times to this and yet tonight it sounds totally fresh and alive in ways i never knew. I'm writing this at the 19 minute mark and it sounds like a church organ, and mild carnival, and the violin traipsing, and horns going this way and that, and so delicate, and joyful and wistful, and fluid and segmented, and harmonic and aharmonic, yowza
He wrote it to commemorate the death of 18-year-old Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler, and after completing it he himself died in the same year.
I find this probably the greatest work from the 2nd Viennese School. It is like to perfect marriage between tonal writing and the use of the 12 tone system and as a whole, a summary of all the ages of classical music from the new horizons of this new system has to offer, the lush and dark harmonies which were birth from the Romantic era and like a rising sun over the mountains to the very dawn of classical music as this piece pays deep respect to Bach around 18:25 (I know the chorale starts a bit earlier but the sudden key change and change of timbre by the woodwinds made it feeling like something out of a pastoral painting.
yeah, i just commented that i have listened so many times to this work and never quite experienced that change around 18 minutes in with the church organ like feel - incredible. Truly. It does seem to embody the entire tradition from the 1750'sor so to the moment of its creation and anticipates much that is to come - the bathos of Shostakovich, the lilting expressivity of the neo-romantic, and certainly the abstract expressionism of which we very nearly define atonality and its final consummation in serialism. something about the Violin's constantpresence that reminds me of Brahms - that is just a feeling but nothing concrete.
For me, Berg manages to connect so much more emotionally than the other Serialists (Schönberg, etc.). Entirely true to the serialist style, but still deeply human.
@Alexander Winberg personally, berg and shostakovich are the most human composers to me. they truly represent what humanity is like, which is why they are my 2 favorite composers
Berg was a romantic at heart. Schönberg was a romantic at doubt. Webern was not a romantic... at all (or more specifically, his late pointillistic style).
Berg's profound feelings resonate through this elegy. It is good to hear it again together with the score. That fully reveals the systematic serialism one doesn't need to hear!
Edoardo lol of course you’re here. After hearing for the first time it is also now my favorite violin concerto, although I haven’t heard much aside from the famous ones in 19th century which I don’t like much. Lulu
I remember interviewing the violinist Henryk Szeryng And he told me about how he studied the concerto with Louis Krassner, who premiered the piece back in the 1930s.
La corriente experimental minimalista sucedió al serialismo dodecafónico durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX, y era generalmente música tonal (y fue igualmente popular).
It has taken me two months' of rehearsals of this concerto as a rank and file orchestra member to start appreciating it. At first I thought it would be never, then I started to like certain phrases... now I like quite a lot of it, if not all !
Vijolkoncerts (Eņģeļa piemiņai) (R.,1983) I d. pamattēma 1:02 protestantu korāļa Ir piepildīts citāts II d. 2.fāzē 17:53 (Es ist genug) un variācijas par korāli! ērģeļu efekts klarnešu ansamblī 18:23
The whole piece is very Mahler-like to me, being a lamentation over the tragic death of Mahler's daughter. An incredible piece of the most touching music.
I know this is an old comment but listening to first the early works of Schoenberg, then the fuller works of the likes of Bartók and Shostakovich (especially the more dissonant ones) worked for me back when I was in high school and undergrad. If you can form a liking for the former’s string quartets or the latter’s earlier symphonies and chamber works a piece like this concerto or the piano concerto by Schoenberg becomes much more tolerable. Patience is key, as well as preparing yourself through more complex but also more accessible works and composers (Schnittke is another major one for me). Depending on how devoted you are to expanding the range of stuff you can listen to, that path can bring you to a place where you thoroughly enjoy stuff you might not even consider music beforehand
The violinist plays an a, not a suspended a flat in bar 86 in the second movement, as the upper staff suggests (and a falling chromatic line throughout).
The only thing i that comes to mind is its trying to indicate a melody line that carried by several instruments that are passing it off to each other. Now i could bw completely wrong, but this is done all the time in piano music and it's the only thing that makes sense to me.
@@cobblestonegenerator I wondered about this too, and had the same suspicion. But on a piano it's all the same instrument and usually the same player. How would you notate the individual parts? Also, there was at least one place where the marks looked like parentheses around a passage of several measures on one line (bar 246 of 1st movement, cello part)
@@steveclaflin594 I believe those slurs and arrows are just used to visually show the conductor where a phrase moves to when it's passed between instruments so they know which section to bring out. The individual parts on IMSLP don't have these slurs or arrows. Those marks on the cello part and some other places in the score are parentheses. You can barely tell that the notes in parentheses are slightly smaller and in unison with the solo violin. And the German below the score says something like "play to support the soloist," so I assume its an optional part that the soloist or conductor might ask the cellos to play for balance/texture reasons.
Yeah, Violinist: Itzhak Perlman and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa are in the habit of performing and recording inconsequential compositions.
Uh, I hate how the double bass isn't transposed! I hope that's not the case on the parts, I hate ledger lines. Few times trying to play from a tuba or a piano part was terrible enough! Never had the chance to play this masterpiece yet, unfortunately.
It would be nice if there were not ads interrupting this every 5 minutes...totally wrecks it. Berg never knew anything about TV commercials! He knew about the radio ones, but they were kind enough not to interrupt the performances with commercials between movements. SMH.
@@jsbach1750 thanks, yes I finally installed Adblocker. I don't know why the commercials/ads are there - RU-vid does not let people profit off of copyrighted recordings. I've tried uploading stuff and although it let me upload them, I can not make money off of them, not that I ever wanted to/needed to.
20c 초반 음악 베르크 - [바이올린 협주곡] ★제 3기 [12음 기법] [12음 기법] : [완전한 무조성 음악]을 [성취]하기 위하여 [음렬]을 만들어 [12음을 모두 한번씩 사용]한다는 것이다. 이렇게 해서 만들어진 (음의 나열)을 [＊기본 음렬] 이라고 한다. 기본음렬을 [1)전위] [2)역행] [3)전위역행] 시켜 [철저하기 무조적]이며 [체계화된 음악]을 만드는 작곡 기법이다. [베르크] : 신빈악파 중 [낭만파적 성향이 가장 강해서] 작품에서 [긴장에 찬 극적 표현]과 [격렬한 감정의 표출]이 뛰어나다. [베르크 바이올린 협주곡] : [12음 기법]과 [＊조성적 어법]이 [★함께 사용]되었다.
Concerti like this are always much more enjoyable to listen to because they really are "adult music", or "for mature audiences only." No little prodigies perform or record them because no music director or record company will let them do it. Let the young notesmiths spin off Tchaikovsky and (God forbid) Sibelius - but leave the Berg and Schoenberg and Walton and Stravinsky and Britten for the grown-ups.
Berg led a fascinating life, the many strands of which came to a head in the incredible Violin Concerto - check out my video about this piece here! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sDbvpuQqAYU.html
You realize the long line of people that have criticized the great composers is endless. Are there too many notes for you? Just tell us which ones to take out.
@@marek9741 Then beat it. Your criticism sounds like sour grapes to me. Go listen to music you like rather complaining here that you don’t like something that is widely acclaimed by people more knowledgeable than you.
@@BUF-vr5cr I mean, you don't know anything about me but anyway, it's a RU-vid comment section, I can say what I like. Popular ≠ good. Also, many people criticize modern music ? Not like it is an unpopular opinion to say it is unenjoyable.
It took me multiple listens to get into a lot of 20th century music, so it may be the same for you. Even then you still might not like it and that’s fine.
Всё произведение,как начинается с настройки скрипки,оркестра, так и продолжается до конца. Зачем было писать и исполнять такое- загадка. Разобрали музыку,уничтожили дух,стали атеистом и написали нечто этакое. Очень умно, но абсолютно некрасиво,упадочнически бессмысленно. Музыка- это зеркало души. Душа здесь разобрана,препарирована, перемешана,низведена до полной бессмыслицы. Зачем так уродовать себя? Без сомнения,это смерть Европы.
@@pantslesswrock lmao, but related to the other comment you made: Just let modern music exist man, there's people that occasionally enjoy it like me and we're not harming anyone.
